Brian Aldiss
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First British Edition Orbit (2002) |
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Paperback - Orbit (2003) |
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Super-State
A Novel of a Future Europe
Welcome to the near future: to the super-state of Europe forty years from now, a Europe embracing everywhere, from the west coast of Ireland to the east coast of Greece. It is a place where technology advances ever onwards, where humanitarian concerns slip ever backwards and where the answers to the big questions remain as elusive as always.
Super-State begins with the bizarre wedding of Victor de Bourcey, son of the President of the European Union. With his wife-to-be unable to attend, her place is taken by an unusual understudy: an android. And as the guests toast this strangest of unions, the celebrations are ominously interrupted as a stampede of horses brings the full force of nature to the ultra-modern world.
Brian Aldiss’s wonderful novel takes us into a land bedevilled by the dual threats of war and global warming, where androids are a nuisance and kept locked in the cupboard, and where a subversive group called the ‘Insanatics’ is sending out doleful messages to worry and provoke the population. And as life on Earth stumbles forwards, the crew of the spacecraft Roddenberry arrive at their destination, Jupiter - and discover life!
From the mind of the man who dreamt up Steven Spielberg’s A.I., Super-State is a fascinating window on the way the world might be. Laced with a cool wit and a powerful prescience, it is Brian Aldiss’s darkest and funniest novel to date.
'Black, bitter and darkly unforgiving, this is classic Aldiss' The Guardian
‘Witty and satirical’ The Times
‘Full of wisdom lacking from even the most percipient works of younger authors’ SFX
‘Brian Aldiss is one of the most influential – and one of the best – SF writers Britain has ever produced’ Iain Banks
| British Pbk Original - Orbit (2001) |
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Supertoys Last All Summer Long
And Other Stories of Future Time
‘You And I Are Real, Teddy, Aren’t We?’
The bear’s eyes regarded the boy unflinchingly. ‘You and I are real, David.’ It specialised in comfort.’
Supertoys Last All Summer Long is the haunting tale of a young boy unable to please his mother, a boy who is not a boy at all, a boy whose intelligence is artificial…
This tale, which was taken up by the late Stanley Kubrick, and is soon to be made intro a major motion picture by Steven Spielberg, is the title story of Aldiss’s formidable collection of futuristic fables. It is typical of the writer’s humane power of prophecy and his unerring sense of how technology and intelligence could work together. From the pessimism of ‘Ill’, where corporate greed controls natural resources; to the optimism of ’The Pause Button’, where medical advances lead to a more thoughtful society, Aldiss’s questioning is subtle yet simple - has humanity the wit and empathetic strength to keep up with the Irresistible progress of technology?
After almost fifty years at the forefront of science-fiction writing, Brian Aldiss has recently been awarded the title ‘Grand Master of Science Fiction’ by the SFWA.
Brian Aldiss has a website at: http://www.brianwaldiss.com
’Brian Aldiss is one of the most influential - and one of the best - SF , writers Britain has ever produced’ lain Banks
| Paperback - Warner (2000) |
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White Mars
Or, The Mind Set Free: A 21st-Century Utopia
In collaboration with Roger Penrose
How can we achieve a better world? A happier future? A new understanding of life?
Towards the end of the twenty-first century, a society of men and women a few thousand strong is marooned on Mars. This is a Mars unspoilt, a Mars unimproved; as the Antarctic has been designated a continent for science, so Mars is preserved as a planet for science - a White Mars. And it is on this ‘Ayers Rock in the sky’ that Tom Jeffries slowly creates his goal: the humanising of science, the improvement of human existence, the freeing of the mind from its dangerous past ...
White Mars marks a unique collaboration between the novelist and science fiction writer, Brian Aldiss, and the distinguished mathematician and scientist, Sir Roger Penrose. This startling and authoritative book shows how a new society could be built, in doing so producing a beautiful and grim new myth.
Sir Roger Penrose is a leading world authority on many areas of mathematical and theoretical physics. He was recently hailed as ‘one of the greatest living disciples of Albert Einstein’. His is a bold and speculative mind, lecturing with his particular brand of clarity and humour on such topics as quantum gravity and mental workings. Among his many learned books, The Emperor’s New Mind is particularly popular and influential. For many years Sir Roger was Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford.
‘This novel is not just a plea for Mars to be kept as an unspoilt wilderness ... it also explores the planet’s utopian possibilities ... like many modern ‘critical utopias’, White Mars teeters intriguingly on the brink of subverting its own stated ideals’ Edward James, TLS
‘Completely absorbing, suffused with common sense and, on occasion, genuinely profound’ Time Out
| Paperback - Gollancz Millenium (2000) |
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Non-Stop
Curiosity was discouraged in the Green tribe. Its members lived out their lives in cramped Quarters, hacking away at the encroaching ponics. As to where they were – that was forgotten.
Roy Complain decides to find out. With the renegade priest Marapper, he moves into unmapped territory, where they make a series of discoveries which turn their universe upside-down…
'Brilliant… a classic of the field' Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
‘Non-Stop was one of the first SF novels I read, and it haunts me to this day. Its gritty reality and wonderful list of characters make the setting seem so immediate and palpable, you can almost taste it’ Greg Bear
‘Fascinating reading up to the end, and then, when you discover what it was all about, you start again at the beginning’ Observer
About The Author
Brian Aldiss was born in East Dereham, Norfolk in 1925. During WWII he served in the Royal Signals in Burma and Sumatra. In 1948 he was demobilized and started work as an assistant in an Oxford bookshop. His first published SF story was 'Criminal Record' which appeared in Science Fantasy in 1954. His first SF novel was Non?Stop, published in 1958. By 1962 he had already won an award for his series of novellas collectively known as Hothouse. During the 60s he wrote some of his most famous titles: Greybeard (1964), Report on Probability A (1968) and Barefoot in the Head: A European Fantasia (1969). The Saliva Tree (a novella published in 1965) won the Nebula for Novellas that year. By now, Aldiss' stylistic concerns and unconventional themes had much in common with the New Wave movement, and he was instrumental in helping obtain an Arts Council grant for New Worlds, the flagship magazine of the New Wave. He continued his prolific output throughout the 70s but achieved great acclaim in the early 80s for the three massively researched novels Helliconia Spring (1982), Helliconia Summer (1983) and Helliconia Winter (1985), the first of which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1983. More recent writings have been either straight fiction focussing on aspects of Aldiss' own life (such as Forgotten Life (1988)) or autobiography (Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith's: A Writing Life (1990) and The Twinkling of an Eye or My Life as an Englishman (1998)). Throughout his writing career, Aldiss has been both an anthologist and critic, involved both in the Penguin Science Fiction and The Year's Best SF Series. Both Billion Year Spree (1973) and its expanded follow-up Trillion Year Spree (1986 with David Wingrove) are considered classic surveys of SF. The latter won a Hugo in 1987. He has also contributed as a reviewer and essayist, writing for the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, and the Washington Post. Recently he has been awarded the Prix Utopia at Futuroscope in France, made Grand Master of Science Fiction by the SFWA, the Science Fiction Writers of America, and given an honorary D.Litt. by the University of Reading. He continues to live in Oxford.
Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.
Super-State
(Orbit,
2002)
Orbit Pbk Apr 03
Supertoys Last All Summer Long
(Orbit Pbk,
2001)
White Mars
(Little,Brown,
1999)
Warner Pbk Nov 00
Non-Stop
Gollancz Millenium Pbk Sep 00
Super-State
WebPage: 
by Brian Aldiss
